Knowledge and analysis of consumer behavior provides valuable insight for retailers, distributors, marketers, and others involved in the sales and distribution of goods and services. Many methods and means of gathering data on consumer activity are known. For example, distributors can develop rough estimates of sales and demand by analyzing the orders they receive. Retailers can estimate sales, demand, and inventory levels from point-of-sale or intelligent cash register systems. Marketers can observe consumer behavior or conduct surveys to gather data on consumer behavior. Such data can help manufacturers, distributors, and retailers make informed decisions about how to supply goods and services, including how much inventory to supply for a particular location and what specific goods or services are appropriate for a location.
Knowledge of inventory levels and consumer behavior can also help manufacturers, distributors, and retailers avoid expenses and costs, as unnecessary expenditures for inventory that may not sell can be avoided, as well as the costs relating to acquiring and housing such inventory. Additionally, real time knowledge of inventory levels can alert retail personnel when a product display is running low so that the retailer can restock the display.
Moreover, theft of small items in retail stores is an all too common problem. Items that are in high demand by thieves include over-the-counter (OTC) products such as analgesics and cough and cold medications, razor blades, camera film, batteries, videos, DVDs, smoking cessation products, infant formula, hair products, body sprays, and other such items. Shelf sweeping is a particular problem for small items. Shelf sweeping occurs when individuals or groups remove all the shelf stock and exit the store, similar to a “smash and grab” shoplifting technique. Shelf sweeping relies on excessive quantities of product being available on the shelf. Retailers must keep substantial inventory on shelf or incur the cost, including labor costs, of constantly restocking.
Retailers are constantly challenged to balance the needs of legitimate consumers' access to high theft items with measures to minimize the incidence of theft. Because theft has become so rampant in certain product categories, such as razor blades and infant formula, many retail stores are taking the products off the shelves and placing them behind the counter or under lock and key. Customers must request the products to make a purchase. This requires additional labor costs to provide individual service to customers who would normally not require it. It also makes it difficult for customers to compare products. Furthermore, it might not be feasible where the space behind the counter is limited and is needed for prescription medications. In some cases, products are simply unavailable due to high pilferage rates. Therefore, a device that minimizes the incidence of product theft by controlling and monitoring access to the product is needed.
Studies have shown that a desirable form of theft deterrence is to cause a time delay between when one product is dispensed and the next product is available for dispensing. Would-be thieves are less likely to steal products if there is a substantial delay between the dispensing of individual products. Another deterrent to theft is alerting retail personnel of attempts to dispense an excessive number of individual products and other suspicious behavior.
Detrimental consumer behavior like shoplifting also can be addressed if appropriate data is available. However, conventional means and methods known today for acquiring and analyzing such data are burdensome, expensive, time-consuming, and/or do not provide real time information, and thus are often not employed. What is needed in the art is a reliable, expedient way to gather and process consumer and/or inventory data so that it can be used to deter theft and make informed inventory decisions.